As we prepare to launch our Third Season, some authorial reflections. While there is much debate about whether Art can ever truly change the World, it’s pretty much a sure thing that the World changes Art. The socio-political-economic-historic-demographic-logistics of it all bangs about in everyone’s head, and that includes artists, so our fictions and other creations can’t help reflecting this. … Read More
Season Three: New Characters, New Castmembers
As we prepare to launch Season 3 of BRASS: The Audio Series, we’re looking forward to introducing you to new characters; an American abolitionist, a Liberian engineering genius, and an Islamic warrior, among many others. To take on these roles, as well as a new voice for the leader of the Brass clan, we’re adding a quartet of distinguished actors … Read More
BRASS Stacks 9: Humiliation by Maupassant
This short story by the French master of the form recounts a conversation between two beautiful young women about the perils of finding good domestic help. Podcast (brass-stacks): Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Android | RSS
This Year’s Brass Screw: Elementary, my Dear Professor!
The Eighth Annual Brass Screw Confederacy ran from June 7th to the 9th this year, and we at BRASS were there not just to participate, but to report. Held yet again in the almost impossibly quaint downtown of Port Townsend, Washington, out on the Olympic Peninsula, this year’s Confederacy was the best-attended yet–helped, it must be said, by the demise … Read More
SCREWING IT UP, BIG TIME
BRASS has made appearances at several different Steampunk Festivals, but our favorite has always been The Brass Screw Confederacy, Port Townsend’s annual Festival of 19th century-style social mayhem. This year’s Festival Theme is Mad Science, pretty much “on brand” for Season Three of BRASS, which features not one but three mad scientists–or if you prefer, one evil, one questionable, and … Read More
BRASS Stacks 8: The Lady Automaton, Part Two
In the conclusion to E. E. Kellett’s short story, things get increasingly dark as the beautiful creation of an genius inventor conquers not only London society, but the hearts of two suitors. Podcast (brass-stacks): Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Android | RSS
BRASS: A Moral Empire?
To some contemporary historians, the phrase “Moral Empire” is as oxymoronic as “Military Intelligence,” or in the present era “Presidential Gravitas.” After all, one only has to look at the history of the 19th century to see that time and time again, the European Empires treated the peoples that they subjugated in ways that ranged from merely exploitative to genocidal. … Read More
Forgotten Futurists: E. E. Kellett
This fine-looking gentleman, E.E. Kellett, was a poet, academic, writer and tutor. The nearest I could find to a biographical sketch of him was via an exhaustive online biographical resource of the writer Malcolm Lowry, which mentions that Kellett was Lowry’s crammer when he was trying to get into Cambridge in 1928, and that Kellett remembered by his contemporary J.H. … Read More
BRASS Stacks 7: The Lady Automaton, Part One
In this obscure but brilliant short story by E. E. Kellett, an inventor is challenged by his friend to create an “anti-phonograph” that can engage a speaker in a conversation. But he does much, much more than that…. Podcast (brass-stacks): Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Android | RSS
Steampunk Primer: Alternate Histories
We all wonder what would have happened if a certain course of events in our lives turned out differently—a different first love, a move we contemplated but didn’t make, a job opportunity missed. If our personal lives and agendas might have been so different following such a change, what would have resulted if major historical events had gone another way? … Read More